The way America pulled itself out of the 19th century era of yellow journalism, when coverage was for sale, was that some publishers realized they could make money by offering the public reliable reporting. That was the origin, among other things, of the Wall Street Journal, back in 1882. The aim was to satisfy customers who needed honest news of Wall Street. It was left to the paying customers (not to the presidents of Ivy League schools, or the Federal Department of Lofty Bureaucrats) to judge whether the product satisfied their needs. They signaled their preferences by deciding — voluntarily — to pay for the newspaper, or not.

If, as Bollinger suggests, the provision of adequate news coverage cannot be entrusted to the market, then what about such vital matters as shelter and medical care? Hmmm… as it happens, government has increasingly been horning in on these matters as well. That’s how we got the subprime mortgage crisis, courtesy of FANNIE MAE and affiliates. Soon the American public will begin its full-body encounter with ObamaCare. Does America really need to spend yet more tax dollars so government can subsidize similar experiments in journalism? Bollinger warns us against trusting the market; but he wishes us to trust that government would pay the pipers of the press, but resist the urge to call the tune.

The worst damage would not be the money spent, but the bias that would be cemented right into the institution of the press. In too many places, there’s quite enough bias already, without the government arranging — in the name of supporting the “free” press – to purchase yet more of the same.

If it’s perfection in news coverage that Bollinger is after, then all avenues end in doom. Who decides what the perfect balance, breadth, and depth should be? Lee Bollinger?

As with most areas of human endeavor, no ultimate single authority in journalism could possibly ensure that all vital stories are always fully covered, without fear or favor. News is a messy, sprawling business that requires endless judgments about what’s happening, often before much of it has actually happened. If you depend on the market, there will always be outlets that cater noticeably to the preferences and worldviews of their established customers. I’d guess that the New York Times and the New York Post choose some of their coverage to appeal to different crowds, because they are well aware of what their customers want. The important point here is that the customers, the readers, are the arbiters — not the government. There is competition, and you, the little guy, get to decide who deserves your dollars for providing news. If you depend on the government, then ultimately it is someone in government who gets to decide which news outlets will be sustained with your money, and which will not — and who gets how much. Under the current administration, for instance, would anyone care to guess whether the public dole would be handed out more liberally to MSNBC or to Fox News? To the editorial pages of the New York Times versus the Wall Street Journal? (Lee Bollinger’s media op-ed in today’s Journal notwithstanding).

Bollinger wraps up his piece by saying that to him, a “key priority” is “to strengthen our public broadcasting in the global arena.” As examples of what he’d like this public broadcasting to compete with, he cites — are you ready for it? — the BBC (biased, see above), China’s CCTV (need I say more?) and Qatar’s Al Jazeera (you see the problem). It bothers him that the U.S. government’s Voice of America (he doesn’t mention that VOA has developed its own anti-American slant) is not allowed to broadcast inside the U.S. He wants to revise that, and — courtesy of the public purse — consolidate such exercises with an augmented NPR and PBS, to produce an ”American World Service” which he assures us will, “with full journalistic independence,” proceed to “provide the news we need.”

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom Bollinger hosted as a speaker at a Columbia World Leaders Forum in 2007, could no doubt advise Bollinger further on the advantages of entrusting government with ensuring that people get exactly the news they need. Iran’s regime has invested heavily in that sort of thing. Not that I think Bollinger aspires to replicate the Fars News Agency. But that is where his logic leads. If there is now to be a renewed cry in Washington for government to set up a giant new media conglomerate, broadcasting state-selected news across the U.S.A. and running welfare services for chosen bastions of the ”private” and “independent” press, then let’s at least spare ourselves the horror of creating an entire new agency to enthrone and entrench a Washington media czar. I have a better idea, given the outreach skills this visionary experiment in communications would require. Just turn the whole project over to NASA.

Hey, I’m just reporting what’s in the media. Doing my part to promote the redemption and family values exhibited by clan Palin. Softly endorsing the now marketable perfection of Queen Sarah, the stain of her conflicting parenting realities now erased by the propitious re-engagement of Alaska’s own Romeo and Juliet. Oh, the secrets he must have squelched for the chance to reboard the gravy train. Why would the Lady from Up There agree to have “an aspiring porn star” latch onto the bosom of her family, but to buy his silence with a part-time job in Nanookie, Inc.? There you have it, fair and balanced.

My point is, this is the media you are all pontificating about – US Magazine generating what will be the top story of the day. Packaged, politicized, leveraged for revenue – just like Fox or the NYT or Pajamas Media – root and purpose of the vanity-celebrity culture that drives content and ideology.

What do you mean “look forward to”? . . . it’s here now. It’s been here for decades. How much you wanna bet that Bill O’Reilly finds some excuse to show either a a strip club or bikinis on a beach tonight? Pure pontificating, I tell ya. What, you think this is some McLuhan Admiration Society? The degradation of media you fear is the very thing that you consume . . . and defend.

not just tax dollars. Last timw I looked if I didn’t want to watch bill I didn’t have to. Bill has an opinion and you can take it or leave it. When the gov has an opinion you have no choice but to take it or get arrested. Its sad that you can’t look around you and see the obvious mate. This stuff does not work never has and never will just look at every other country that’s at the road we are headding down. You are about to destroy everything that made. America great. Socialists are like children who keep sticking pennies into different electrical outlets and think by switching outlets they won’t get shocked

Bollinger writes: “Trusting the market alone to provide all the news coverage we need would mean venturing into the unknown — a risky proposition with a vital public institution hanging in the balance.”

Funny thing. Trusting the free market to deliver the news is the way we’ve done it here in the US for over 300 years. (Including the period before the US, was the US.)

Yet somehow, now that the market is rejecting his prefered solution, this is evidence that the market is broken.

Totalitarian scum!He’s trying to get a bailout for the American analogues of Pravda,to save it from extinction so that it can continue to propagandize on behalf of the American analog for stalinism: the democrats.

Bollinger’s suggested subsidy of failing news media is little more than welfare for companies with a product no one wants. Readership and advertising numbers won’t rise with a government financial underpinning, and will likely continue to fall. Why not just call it what it is, send them a check every month, and save all the money they’d squander on newsprint and ink, plus the subsequent cost of waste disposal.

A proper discussion of MSM problems would contain analogies to dinosaurs and mammals and failure to adapt – not just laments that the “magnificent” dinosaurs will soon not be around to consume “magnificent” amounts of resources and produce “magnificent” piles of “waste”.

You guys all act like there was once some kind of “honest” media. Nothing could be further from the truth. Much of media was actually owned by candidates and political parties and machines and they printed nothing but lies and propaganda. The only honest to God reporting was done in the West and only then it was occasional. Best book I’ve read that contains much about the role of the press during presidential elections is the Pulitzer prize winning history of the Civil War called “Battle Cry of Freedom: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Cry_of_Freedom_%28book%29The Civil War Era” by James McPherson, a terrific read

Factually accurate, but you ignored an important point. The news outlets back then were not unified. Now they pretty much are, with articles coordinated on whatever replaced Journolist. Ever notice how some things that support the left come out all at once through several diffferent sources?

Bollinger’s point of view on the current media calibration is typical of what you will find throughout socialist academia. These people have good reason to fear that the market is taking down the Old Media organizations that supported their beliefs for so long. But didn’t the market originally bring these organizations up? Of course, but this is something to be ignored for the urgency of the liberal agenda.

Collectively, the Old Media is in the financial fix it is because most people don’t trust it anymore. Fox News has more viewers each day and outclasses anything done by the rest of the media. And, on an almost daily and nightly basis, Fox viewers, who don’t watch the Old Media much anymore to know otherwise, are treated to unbelievable vestiges of liberal media bias.

Bollinger and his kind are desperate to preserve whatever is left of the Old Media organizations. Most people have rejected much of the OM for alternatives like Fox and the Internet for very good reasons and these reasons should not to be lightly dismissed by preening out of touch elitists.

There’s something amazing about statists. No matter how often they see government botch the things they run, they still see government intervention and control as the panacea that will cure all ills. There’s something almost religious in the way they think, in that they have unquestioning faith in government, and in the way that no amount of empirical evidence can cause them to question their faith.

MSM mission statement: 1. Bash, smear, and lie boldly and often about Bush, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, conservatives, Christians and anyone else who dares not toe the socialist line. 2. Cheerlead for the Obama administration and other enlightened progressives (read Democrats). 3. lie about the ‘wonders’ of liberalism. 4 ignore any ‘inconvenient truths’ about the glories of the progressive cause. wash. rinse. repeat.

that’s about it. so people are leaving the MSM in droves because A) people are not as stupid as the MSM assumes they are. B) people are tired of being fed lies and useless misinformation from a bunch of clueless snivelling elitist adolescents, and C) it’s just SO DAMN BORING TO WATCH! Have you watched her royal perkiness Couric lately? neither have most people. the bottom line: the MSM is a fact free, propaganda filled drivel, that is as useless as it is Booorring!

Mmm hmm . . . a ham-handed admission of the conservative’s survival strategy . . . make false accusations, repeat even when debunked, and then change the subject to the next histrionic offense. (Hey, whatever happened to that Joe Sestak job offer SCANDEL?) You could have just said, “I won’t dignify that with an answer.”

Bottom line, you weren’t up to the task. You know you would have been hard-pressed to find moments of bias in Couric’s telecast. And you know I could have listed a dozen from any one Fox show. I even gave you the choice!

But don’t let that stop you from slinking away using that fake limp that identifies the intellectual cowardice of right-wing extremists.

What you describe to a T is the liberal strategy (liberals love projection) anyway, I didn’t say anything about couric’s bias, which is well documented, I said she was a bore. Same for the other obamaphiles that make up the MSM (btw Newsbusters is an excellent site for documenting all kinds of liberal bias – check it out if you dare) Anyway liberal news is BORING. Just my opinion, and judging by the declining ratings and circulation of the dinosaur media, more than a few people seem to agree.

Yes, what did happen to that Joe Sestak job offer scandal (“scandal” with an “a”)?

Oh, I remember. The White House admitted that it did indeed attempt to bribe him out of the race by dangling a position for him, quibbling only over whether compensation would have been in the form of money or simply prestige and perks (as if that mattered). And it turned out that it was not the first time they had done this.

The bias of broadcasters like Couric is far more insidious than that exhibited by the big hitters at Fox. You know where Hannity stands. You know where O’Reilly stands. You know where Beck stands. What you have in Couric’s broadcast, however, is a facade of straight news reporting draped over an invariable bias which is injected by means of story selection (and frequent ommission), regurgitation of false Party talking points, and setup questions posed with a guileless expression.

I suppose it takes a (very) small amount of perceptive ability to recognize this type of bias – which is why its effect is so devastatingly effective on people like you.

At least the clowns at MSNBC have the courage to admit their love of Saul Alinsky live on national television.

Astute observation Masterblaster. Nowadays, the most popular lib news technique is the omission of stories that they deem ‘unimportant’ , for example the van Jones story, Anita Dunn, new black panthers, the NY mosque protest,etc., and any other story that shows the true face of unbridled ‘progressivism’. Since in this era of “hope and change”(ugh), most of the big news stories involve democratic malfeasance of one variety or another and the MSM won’t dare go there. That only leaves vapid worn out dem talking points and cooking segments. Snooooze! perhaps Skeeziks can explain why in this era of unparalelled openness and transparency (sarc/), the allegedely fair and balanced MSM (more sarc/) won’t include these stories.

The MSM DO cover those stories. They just don’t cover them ad nauseum. Fox uses a story like the New Black Panthers not to inform their viewers but to inflame them. But it wouldn’t be fair to suggest that Fox and friends don’t avoid stories just as quickly. Example, you say? When the war in Iraq was in the toilet and our military men and women were being electrocuted in Halliburton showers, what did Fox News run with? Round the clock coverage of Natalie Holloway and Anna Nicole Smith.

You have no standing. And Fox is a despicable excuse for a news organization.

“The MSM DO cover those stories. They just don’t cover them ad nauseum.”

Google “van jones coverage” and read the first linked article. Then take this shiny quarter and buy yourself a clue.

“Fox uses a story like the New Black Panthers not to inform their viewers but to inflame them.”

It’s a story and they report it. Nobody cares whether you like it or not, nor will your characterization of the fact that they report on this story be taken seriously by intelligent people.

“But it wouldn’t be fair to suggest that Fox and friends don’t avoid stories just as quickly. Example, you say? When the war in Iraq was in the toilet and our military men and women were being electrocuted in Halliburton showers, what did Fox News run with?”

Fox News aired TONS of coverage of the Iraq War, the death toll, and the arguments from both sides. Zero comparison. But thanks for playing.

“And Fox is a despicable excuse for a news organization.”

I wouldn’t expect you to appreciate the one network which doesn’t feed you the “progressive” red meat you’re hungry for.

“The most lop-sided coverage by far was aired by Fox News, which featured only 10 references to Walter Reed compared to 121 of Anna Nicole — roughly 12 times the coverage. On the other hand, CNN featured 53 references to Walter Reed compared to 40 of Anna Nicole.” (PEJ)

Hey , good news, they capped the well! You know that one that’s been spewing out oil into the Gulf in America’s worst environmental disaster in history? It’s the lede story on the MSM, along with analysis of the testing and next steps. Wonder what the Drudge headline is . . . “Passion of the Gibson” Now that’s hard-hitting investigative work looking out for real Americans.

Hey, that reminds me, did you see what Michelle Malkin wrote a seek after the rig exploded? She posted a picture of an oil-covered bird from a previous spill and wrote, “How long till the MSM start posting pictures like this?” You see, she was absolutely convinced that the MSM and the environmental whack jobs were “off base” yet again in their complaints and concerns about such matters – using these tragic developments for political purposes only.

So what about Mel Gibson? We liberals called it as we saw it back in 2006 when his true self first exploded. But the right wing media insisted on yet another Malkin pre-emptive blunder:

“On MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, William A. Donohue, president of the conservative Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, said, “There’s a lot of people who have made comments which are bigoted who are not necessarily bigots,” adding that he is “concerned now about piling on.” Of those who won’t forgive Gibson, Donohue said: “Who gives a damn about those people?” Donohue then asked, “What kind of blood do they want out of this man?”

On Fox News’ Fox & Friends, radio host and regular Fox & Friends guest Erich “Mancow” Muller said, “I can’t believe he is anti-Semitic. I can’t believe The Passion of the Christ, they thought was anti-Semitic, because our hero was Jewish.”

In his August 2 column on National Review Online, John Derbyshire excused Gibson’s comments because “[t]he guy was drunk, for heaven’s sake. We all say and do dumb things when we are drunk.” Derbyshire added: “As little as I care for Mel and his splatter-fest Brit-hating oeuvre, though, I care even less for the schoolmarmish, prissy, squealing, skirt-clutching, sissified, feminized, pansified, preening moral vanity of the vile and anti-human Political Correctness cult.”

A press release posted by the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND) asked ,”Where’s the Compassion for Mel Gibson?” Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, founder and president of BOND and an occasional Fox News guest, was quoted in the release as saying: “I am sorry that Mel Gibson and his family are going through this difficult period. Gibson absolutely did the right thing by offering a heartfelt apology and asking for forgiveness from the Jewish community — he’s even asked to meet with Jewish leaders. To those who will not be satisfied until Gibson is destroyed — I say ‘shame on you. Where’s your humanity?’ (MM)

David Horowitz said, “People deserve compassion when they’re in this kind of trouble.” In a press release, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, founder and president of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny, called for Gibson’s detractors to “have compassion,” and said he was “sorry that Mel Gibson and his family are going through this difficult period.” A Fox News poll that summer reported that 80 percent of people surveyed said his comments about Jews would make no difference to them when it came to the decision to see a future Gibson film.

You see, we’re right and you’re wrong and you just can’t bring yourselves to admit it. you’r e only interested in the one network which feeds you the “conservative” red meat you’re hungry for.

Columbia, the school of journalism, is precisely the reason the balance is, was, will continue to be, WRONG.

Of course, I mean that opposite from what Bollinger means it. Our media is leftified by the artificial presumption of intellectual superiority, and yes, moral superiority, which comes with the ‘professionalization’ of journalism, an artificial attempt to place themselves on a level with doctors, lawyers and architects.

They are NOT on that level and NEVER WILL BE.

And the public sorted this a few years ago, naturally, with the result that alternative media have slowly increased in influence, simultaneous with the MSM’s decrease. In attempting to elevate themselves above the hoi polloi and be part of the elite, the MSM has simply sent themselves down the path to irrelevancy.

Columbia University President Lee Bollinger is another example of the liberal irrational thought process. If I understand his premise. The Gov. takes over all of the failing newspapers, TV networks and radio broadcasting, give the editors a tenure similar to university professors and pay for it with tax payer money. Then pass it out free, because like now, no one is willing to pay for crap.

Don’t be silly Doug, that wouldn’t bring us balance would it? I mean if you only got one side… The whole POINT of this czar to make sure we are balanced. So how are they going to MAKE us balanced. Are they going to make us watch an hour of Olbermann for every hour of Beck? Or read the NYT,WAPO and then balance it with…….?

There is no example of government subsidized media that has not become fawning servants of their master, including the vaunted BBC.

The BBC barred Churchill and other critics of Munich from speaking for years, deferring to “government policy.” It eschewed any investigation of PM Brown’s immigration policy while he was in office, forcing the electorate to trust their eyes and experience.

Newspapers have already lost out to craigslist et al for classifieds, which artificially propped papers up long past their ‘sell by’ date. They are also losing readership to aggregators (e.g. Drudge) which will accelerate. The landscape is changing, and newspapers are a part of the past moreso than the future. Bollinger is a typical tech-illiterate lefty. Leftists don’t understand (no habla) technology; their entire POV requires stasis. In short his POV is moot, and nobody needs to give a damn what he thinks.

It would be like putting a catheter and stent into the carotid arteries of a disembodied head, with machines pumping away to keep the flow of oxygen into a bradycephalic system that one might claim is still alive, technically, but will soon succumb despite the best perestroika surgeons from the Karl Marx Institute for the Very Very Nervous.

Or, as they used to say in the Workers’ Paradise, “They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work.” 8)

I believe that all TV/Cable “news” reporters should be licensed by the government just as Doctors, Lawyers, CPA, et al are licensed. To be licensed, one must demonstrate a “doctorate” level mastery of the subject matter that one is authorized to cover and reporters, on the public airways, should not be allowed to cover any subject they are not licensed to cover. That would, of course, eliminate 90% plus of all the current TV/cable reporters from the screen; and we would no longer be insulted by: “incompetent to ask the appropriate question”: pretty boys/girls…

Also, reporters should have a code of ethics: after you ask a question, shut your big mouth at least a minute and let the person answer; but that would mostly take care of itself if you had competent licensed reporters instead of “ hi mom did you see me ask a question” types…
NPR is my favorite place to hear ultra liberal’s debate radical liberals.

NPR has mastered portraying conservative views as though they are weird merely through the voice inflections of the announcer.

If a conservative is present, he is generally light weight, or asked weird questions, or cut off before setting the record straight.

One knows he is in for a radical liberal perspective when one syllable words are pronounced as three syllables: “NPR presents the WOR-ol-DDD (world) which of course is some radical liberal “-do gooder blah blah

NPR is paid for by public funds; but that is not disclosed; only white liberal names are mentioned: the J & K T McA…foundation…never heard them say tax payers…radical liberals…

you can bet that Bollinger wouldn’t be concerned at all if it was Fox and not the New York Times that needed the bailout. this is all about controlling the message; I think he must be worried that some factual news has been leaking out on the blogs and he wants to put a stop to that.

and the fact that he holds up academe as his example of “free speech” shows how ludicrous the whole argument is. but then, that’s Lee: he joins Thomas Friedman, Woody Allen, and Oliver Stone et al. in wishing we were ruled by a dictator.

A mysterious physiological characteristic of a snake is where and how anatomically it removes snake waste. This intrigues typically the biologically curious as to how such a low foul looking reptilian beast can reside amongst all the other beasts and maintain such a discreet presence that despite it’s rapaciousness the snake remains un-noticed.

Now I’ve come too understand so much about snakes and their waste products and where and how they’re extruded. Lee Bollinger’s mouth number one. Columbia University number 2. And natch their eggs are hatched there also.

Amazing how many media outlets all of a sudden feel government welfare is a mighty fine prescription to their fiscal problems. For years they thrived selling snake oil. “Wha happened”?

Innovative Technologies. Live with it, just like billions of others have and will. Even snakes shed their skins, and move onto the next phase.

The funny thing about liberals/Progressives is that they really don’t think, they memorize and since Progressivism is really their catechism we all constantly have to listen to them bleet their silly mantras. This is why they tend to cluster in Ivy League colleges. They are the little nerds who didn’t have much of a life as a child and in a desperate attempt to gain attention they found they could memorize the lessons of their teachers and feed it back to them and get rewarded with high grades. Once they all found themselves in the same fancy colleges they decided that God must have wanted it this way and decided to start telling the rest of us how we ought to live. Sounds correct doesn’t it?

You know, if Columbia University President Lee Bollinger wrote this during the Bush administration a mere two or three years ago, the liberals would be screaming how this is just one more master plan for George W. Bush to become a dictator and rule the U.S. with an iron fist.

When someone like Bollinger advances a lelftist cause, we must challenge EVERY fallacy, not just the obvious ones.

Bollinger tries to use as precedent the idea that in the old days, we regulated the airwaves so today we must regulate both ink and Internet.

That is deeply flawed. Claiming that broadcast regulation was needed for those using the limited “public commons” of certain frequencies is no justification at all for seizin bureaucratic authority over private goods like printing presses and computer keyboards.

I think Bollinger’s suggestion that the government should subsidize the media is directly related to the Columbia School of Journalism. As more and more media outlets evaporate so goes the jobs for his students. I don’t have any facts at my disposable, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Columbia is getting less and less applications to their School of Journalism. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that his op-ed appeared just weeks after graduation when, perhaps, the dearth of journalism jobs became stunningly clear. Subsidizing the media also means subsidizing the Columbia School of Journalism.

Isn’t this the same idiot who invited Ahmedinejad to speak at Columbia but stopped Wafa Sultan and he allows severe and extreme anti-semitism to flourish at Columbia?Please take your message from whence it comes and give it about as much respect as that person deserves.

“Otherwise, worries Bollinger, Americans might not get the news they need.” No, Mr. Bollinger; otherwise Americans will not get the news you prefer they hear. They are now getting the news the notorious, in your eyes, free market dictates they want. Your problem, sir and that of your ilk is that the free market is not working in your favor not because Americans are not getting your message but precisely because they are; they’ve rejected it and the only recourse you have is to force it through their eyes and between their ears while piously claiming it’s only fair. In the free market system, sir, fairness is not the issue, it’s what sells “soap,” as crass as that sounds. That doesn’t sit well with you’re narcissistic belief in your intellectual superiority but it is an irrefutable fact of American life and, sorry to disappoint you, we’d all dearly like to keep it that way. Contrary to what you and your ilk want so desperately to believe, a majority of Americans like the common sense message that dominates talk radio because it largely fits their version of truth based on facts not fancy rhetoric laced with inane, quasi intellectual arguments and ad hominem attacks on all things conservative or with Judeo/Christian overtones. Further, with your University and many others along with the former big television news networks, NPR, PBS, most of the major print news media, The Daily Kos, MoveOn.org, much of the Hollywood crowd, and now the Obama administration, your balance scale is already tilted so far to the left it’s a wonder you’re not suffering a nose bleed.

Just leave Bollinger alone. He is an Ivy League president, and he knows, knows all serious decisions, like how much salt you should be allowed to consume without government penalty, or what news is fit to be news, need to be determined by the Elites, and they should be paid by the hoi polloi. Just like sheep paying, with their wool and lives, for the shepherd’s benificent, nurturing care. And the Elites are products of Ivy League, non-taxpaying institutions. He’s just doing his job: producing Elites.

Heck, they do it in France, so it must be the right thing; all French gov’t officials of significance are products of one, tax funded, institution, the Ecole Nationale Something-Or-Other.

Yep pretty much all the worst dictators in history. Came to power the same way. Its so sad that the leftist looney thinks that because its their beliefs being forced down everyones throat its somehow better. I forget the original saying but its basicy states that necessity is the reason behind all loss of freedom it is the creed of slaves and slave owners alike. I pray that we can vote this away..if not other steps will sadly become needed.

I don’t have time to go hunting for it right now, but is this the guy that stated that he was of the belief that in order for an individual to to do ANY sort of journalism /reporting that you needed to be a Federally Licensed Journalist (along the lines of lawyers, doctors, and pilots) part of which would require that you had to have graduated with a Journalism Degree from a Federally Accredited Journalism School – i.e Columbia?

I seem to remember it being said that a person needed to be trained in proper journalism techniques in order to be a reporter and to respect what was in the public’s best interests and in promoting a stable, fair, and sustainable progressive society.

Ever since the news media managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Vietnam, they have been drunk with power. They have set the agenda in America for nearly half a century now. Almost anyone they endorse for office has an insatiable desire to see their name mentioned in print favorably. Just look at the three Democratic Presidents elected since Vietnam; Carter, Clinton, and Obama. All are pushovers. With any of them in office the press controls the Oval office, without shouldering the responsibility for the catastrophes that will always follow.

But the American people have had enough. With their wallets they are saying goodbye to slanted, one sided news. The press in Europe, operating under basically the rules as the press in America, is making ends meet. This means that the problem isn’t the ‘new media’, the problem is that the American press has abandoned their customer base.

Ask an editor how he or she determines if a story is newsworthy, and more likely than not they will tell you it is because they checked with other news people. This is like asking a bunch of carbon-copy clones of yourself. There is no critical, outside viewpoint heard anymore in the news media.

It was this attitude that drove Americans in record numbers to talk radio and internet news sources. Our point of view was way, way under-represented in what was being shown on the front cover of the NY Times and all of their wannabe’s. We thirsted for the truth, and we weren’t getting it from our traditional sources.

The news media brought this disaster upon themselves, and they have no one to blame but themselves.

“enhanced public funding for journalism.” He envisions the future of American journalism as a “mixed system,” part public, part private.”

This is (partially) how government turned my native France into a nation of sheeps. Pluralism of the media doesn’t exist there, and all public discourse is either socialist-left or socialist-right. No ideas differ from that narrow socialist path, and non-compliant journalists end up ostracized and blacklisted. The government of France has a financial hand in all printed and TV media, through direct and indirect subsidies of parent companies. The internet is the only media over which French government has no power – a troubling thorn to state control that government is desperately attempting to control. Of course, the french don’t have freedom of speech, and can be charged with a crime FOR THEIR SPEECH… as happened recently to journalist Eric Zemmour. Unfortunately, that govt power over the people is not enough for the rapacious appetite of a tyranical government. Thank God French blogs and journalists can set up shop in an American based internet company (such as wordpress), which is beyond the reach of french govt.

Watch out for governmental hand in the media – lest our great American nation becomes (as France) the ghost of its past. Quiet desperation is not the American way – God Bless America.